2013高中英语阅读素材：An Old Apple Tree.docVIP

An Old Apple Tree Every April I am beset by the same concern—that spring might not occur this year. The landscape looks dull, with hills, sky and forest forming a single gray color, like the light tint an artist paints on a canvas before the masterwork. My spirit ebbs, as it did during an April snowfall when I first came to Maine 15 years ago. “Just wait,” a neighbor counseled.“Youll wake up one morning and spring will just be here.”And look, on May 3 that year, I awoke to a green so startling as to be almost electric, as if spring were simply a matter of flipping a switch. Hills, sky and forest revealed their purples, blues and greens. Leaves had unfurled, goldfinches had arrived at the feeder and daffodils were fighting their way towards heaven.Then there was the old apple tree. It sits on an undeveloped land in my neighborhood. It belongs to no one and therefore to everyone. The trees dark, twisted branches sprawl in unpruned abandon. Each spring it blossoms so freely that the air fills with the fragrance of apple. When I drive by with my windows rolled down, it gives me the feeling of moving in another world, like a kid on a water slide.Until last year, I thought I was the only one aware of this tree. And then one day, in a fit of spring madness, I set out with a pruner and lopped off a few errant branches. No sooner had I arrived under the tree than neighbors opened their windows and stepped onto their porches. These were people I barely knew and seldom spoke to, but it was as if I had come unbidden into their personal gardens.My mobile home neighbor was the first to speak.“ Youre not going to cut it down, are you?” she asked anxiously. Another neighbor winced as I cut off a branch.“Dont kill it, now,”he cautioned.Soon half the neighborhood had joined me under the apple tree. It struck me that I had lived there for five years and only now was learning these peoples names, what they did for a living and how they passed the winter. It was as if the old ap